An Apparent Intention

I'm on p. 456 of A Fire in the Mind, the biography of Joseph Campbell. I continue to enjoy the coincidences and connections I am making while reading the book, and reading it at the right time in my life. His wife, Jean Erdman, who is still alive (98), is a dancer, choreographer, and theatre artist, and I feel connected to her (via birthday) and delighted that my life in theatre and writing has also taken me into the dance world. Since she created a dance theatre piece, called The Coach with Six Insides, based on Finnegan's Wake, I will probably have to read Finnegan's Wake someday! At least I can use Campbell's Skeleton Key to get inside it!

Anyhoo, on p. 456 is this, from a letter Campbell wrote to Erdman:

"It all puts me mind again of Schopenhauer's wonderful piece on An Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual: how the continuities of a lifetime seem, in the end, to have been plotted out by a novelist--all the accidents, apparently uncoordinated as they first occur, concurring finally toward the shaping of an order."

I've been attuned to that "apparent intention" lately, noticing it in my own life, and also hearing a lot about it in current culture, while having forgotten that it came from Schopenhauer, so I suppose he'll also have to go on my reading/re-reading list.... Surely I've read some excerpted Schopenhauer! And those he influenced. Sigh.... How will I ever read everything? Also I'd rather look at this dahlia.